Camp Cheng (CONTINUED)

~CHAPTER 36~

"So..." Felix smiled, "I think we lost them."

I strained my ears to hear the clanking of armour and the rampage of footsteps but all I could hear was our heavy breathing and my heart. It was beating so loudly I was afraid everyone could hear it.

"Now that they're out of the way," I spoke up, trying to regain some control of my tired body, "I think you'd better begin from the beginning, Luka."

Okay, maybe I was acting slightly paranoid. Yeah- just a little bit paranoid. But in my defence, can you blame me? A weird-looking teenager just shows up (yeah, yeah, I know- I'm one to talk) and I'm just supposed to trust him?

Sure, that's exactly what my sister did, but come on! She is my sister!

Then again, this boy does know your sister. Shouldn't you trust him? The voice in my head said.

I instantly shut it down. Arguing with that voice never ends well.

He nodded in agreement. I was glad he was complying with my request instead of blatantly defying me. That would've been awkward.

Settling down against the cold, mossy stone of the dark maze we were trapped in (seeing as though we seemed to have enough time to rest a bit before moving on) I sighed and turned my attention to Luka.

He began to speak. He told everything that had happened after Marinette had left. He told us how they knew she was alive as the akumas had kept on purifying- to which she protested, loudly, "It seemed like a good idea at the time!"- and how Lila had moved into their cabin; to which she also protested, "Oh hell no, not that son of a-". He recounted everything that had happened until he had reached the palace- including that kiss at the ball we'd been to (and how Adrien wouldn't stop freaking out about it, which rewarded us a blushing Marinette).

"So," he then goes, "we split up to go look for you, right? So, I go investigate my assigned area for around 20 minutes. Obviously, I didn't find anything since you were way down here, but we were all really confident you had to be around the castle somewhere."

I raised my eyebrow (I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately) at the word "we". Luka noticed this. "Oh, and by 'we' I mean me, Alya, Nino, Kagami and Adrien, though I guess he wasn't there at this point."

Marinette blinked. Once. Twice.

"Wait- if you- and you all- then that me- you all know each other's identities?!"

"Well yeah, Marinette, I mean you did write those letters, we all read them, and it all came together pretty quickly after."

"Letters?" Felix and I jumped in, looking questioningly at my sister.

She shrugged it off. "I'll explain later. What happened next?"

"Well, when we all decided it was time to regroup, Adrien wasn't there. We all figured that he'd just gotten a bit caught up in searching for you, I've never seen him so distressed- ow, Marinette, that one hurt- so we'd decided to wait it out." Luka smiled bitterly. "Wish we hadn't. Because by the time we decided to go look for him-" he paused for dramatic effect- "he was gone."

We all fake gasped in horror. The paralyzing tragedy! The panic-inducing terror! We all looked simultaneously at each other and burst out laughing. Maybe it was because of how dramatic Luka was being as he told the story. Maybe it was out of sheer absurdity. Or maybe we...were just losing our minds.
Whatever the cause behind it, we laughed uncontrollably. And honestly, it scared me.

Our laughter was short-lived, however- because this was, actually, a serious matter.

After we'd sobered up, Luka continued. "The first time we'd swept around, we didn't find anything. We were determined that he had to be around somewhere, that we'd missed something, so we went again, this time paying more attention to close details. We lucked out though; I just managed to spot a little hole in the side of the castle as some light happened to reflect across it. I called everyone over, and we went to check it out.